Dad''s Panic
Dad was village copper for several years (our old Police House is now "Peelers" in Thorneydown Road) and had a number of people he got on well with. He tended not to panic too often but one day a message came through that had him rush out in panic because of the loss of one of his friends, Pat Pocock from the Post Office.
I can't remember the exact year but it was early 1960's.
Later the Post Office was moved to a shop in Thorneydown Road and later still it was taken over by Frank Gaulton who still ran it when we left Winterbourne in 1964.
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RE: RE: Dad''s Panic
Further to the above 'Memory', I should like to add that my father was the first Constable (P.C. Gray) to be posted to the new Police Station in Winterbourne Gunner in 1936 and I was actually born there in 1939. I can remember aspects of the war i.e D-Day landing preparations, troop training at the army Gas School, American troops arriving and giving me oranges and chewing gum and German prisoners of war at the local farm adjacent to Policeman's Corner. I eventually went to primary school at Winterbourne Earls and ultimately left Winterbourne when my father was posted to Sutton Veny in 1948. Village family names that I can remember from that period of time are Snelgrove, Bridges, Scutt (or Scott) and Merrifield and I can also remember the owner (Budden) of the old Railway Hotel at Porton. Thanks for memory of my old home ~ it was initially a shock to the system seeing it mentioned.
Comment from Clive Gray on Sunday, 15th March 2009.
RE: RE: Dad''s Panic
I was born at The Cottages, Main Road in 1932, owned until his death in 1929 by my grandfather Ernest Robins, the village boot and shoe repairer. There was no electricity or running water and one of my jobs was to go to the other end of the cottages with two - to me - huge buckets to draw water from the well. My aunt cooked everything on the kitchen range and three primus stoves in the scullery. Baths for the children were once a week, either in a tin bath in front of the range or in the copper in the outhouse after the washing had been finished. I attended the local school and remember the teachers:- Mrs Eyres the headteacher, with her slightly offset false teeth and fearsome cane; Mrs Hopkins, and the infants' teacher Mrs Medlam. There was a huge belly stove in the main classroom where Mrs Eyres taught two classes, both at once. In winter the school milk invariably arrived frozen solid and the bottles had to be arranged around the stove to thaw out. My cousins and I would spend most of our free time either in the withy bed at the end of the garden or down by the river at 'the hatches'. We used to swim there, catch minnows and sticklebacks and watch the many trout that lurked under the weed in the fast flowing water. In August the village would turn out to walk to the Down Barn fields to stack the 'stooks' and glean the wheat that had been left behind by the binder and in the autumn our family would make our annual pilgrimage up to Thorny Down to collect the huge blackberries. Families I remember were Bridges, Shepherd, Mowlem, Snelgrove, Burt, Blake, Merrifield, Goodfellow, Miles, Futcher, Moody. Happy days.
Comment from Terry Laver on Sunday, 30th August 2009.